Kids are notorious scene stealers and as sharp a
performance as was
put on by Peter Finch, nevertheless, the kid still
stole the show. He's
the native Australian, returning home after
successfully building a
budding
career in England and working with Laurence Olivier;
and, as rumored,
having
an affair with Mrs. Olivier. He should be glad to be
home again!

Shiralee could be at times a very penetrating
and
hard look
at a proud and independent man who has fallen more in
love with the
Aussie
countryside and outback, than he has with settling
down and being a
responsible
family man. Peter Finch is well up to the task of
being this rugged
individualist,
Jim Macauley. He is known as a scagman, someone who
seeks only
temporary
work and whose aim is to be completely independent.

At times the film drifts off into soapy sentimental
territory, becoming
contrived and not sure if it wants to be that honest
and truthful about
the bitter-sweet story it is telling.

The story is a rather plain one. Mac comes home to
find his
wife
Marge (Sellars) in bed with the man she is living
with, Donny (Rose),
and
in the same beer bottle cluttered room is his young
daughter asleep.
Mac
acts indignant and hears a lecture from his wife that
he ignored her.
She
says: "What did you expect me to do, sit here and wait
for you
forever?"
He then beats up Donny, puts the little girl over his
shoulder and is
back
on the road.

The girl's name is Buster (Dana) and she is cute,
tempestuous, and
hardy, the best reason for watching this film. She
becomes the
Shiralee,
which is the aborigine word meaning a burden. It is
heartbreaking to
see
her on the road as no matter what the hardship she
shows an unspoken
love
for her father who is aloof in his real love for her,
but is won
completely
over to her by the time the film ends.

Mac retraces his previous routes and as expected, we
see
that this
leads to trouble. The two roam the country's back
roads with the father
getting into a big fight, meeting again his colorful
acquaintances,
meeting
new colorful characters, and painstakingly breaking
the little girl
into
his routine. She takes solace in a doll one of Mac's
friends gives her,
which is used to compensate for her loneliness.

It is a movie made by Ealing, a British studio, that
actually used
mostly a British cast, making the film seem more
British than Aussie.
It
is a film that Disney could have easily made; and, it
should be noted
that
this film was made into a successful television
sitcom.

The subplot did not play really well; it had Mac
kicked off
a farm
he previously worked at 7 years ago even though Buster
has a high
fever,
as the owner of the farm despises Mac for making his
daughter Lily
(Harris)
pregnant and then leaving her. Mac's excuse, is that
he didn't know she
was pregnant and lost the baby.

There is also some comedy to soften the
melodramatics: a
couple (Bella
& Luke) that are so good that they seem like they
were created only
for sitcoms take Mac and Buster under their wing.
Buster refuses the
comfort
of a real bed this warm couple offers, and insists she
go along with
her
dad as he searches for work.

The crisis point comes when Buster's mom gets a
court date
to prove
that she would be a better parent than the father to
the child. But
this
all seems unimportant when Buster, chasing after her
father who fails
to
return home because he is with a woman, gets hit by a
car and it is
touch-and-go
whether she will live or die. Melodramatics take over,
and the film is
now reduced to a sentimental weepy. It is still packed
with enough
sustaining
power to make it pleasant enough viewing, but no more
than that.